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Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

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Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#102

So now AWS DocumentDB, Azure CosmosDB, and even Apple's FoundationDB have a MongoDB compatible API. I expect other multimodal databases to offer the same soon enough. Strange turn of events for MongoDB but I guess that's what happens when the interface is open and anyone can build a backend to it, especially a relatively simple document-store.

And when they have a restrictive license.

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#103
post #79

I was reading a post [0] by Brian Cantrill that predicted this would be the result of licences like the SSPL. I instinctively disagreed with him, but it turns out he was right: "The cloud services providers are currently reproprietarizing all of computing — they are making their own CPUs for crying out loud! — reimplementing the bits of your software that they need in the name of the service that their customers want…

What is the way out? Would love to hear from people.

Not sure this would fall under SSPL in any case. It's clear that what Amazon is doing is using Postgres under the hood, not really mongo. So I'm not sure how that would work if you make an interface shim to make postgres look like mongo, are you then subject to the mongo license? the postgres license? the apache 2.0 mongo api license? all of them? what if clauses of them are mutually exclusive? etc etc etc.

Just at a cursory glance it certainly seems like only the apache 2.0 mongo api license would apply. But I guess mongo could try to force the sspl on amazon?

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#104

Serious question: is there any real reason to use Mongo over Elasticsearch?

ES grew out of Lucene, which provided an inverted index of all the text in a document, with a bunch of NLP related features bolted onto that. While ostensibly designed to be developer friendly, ES had and still has a horribly hacked together API with bugs and mis-documented misfeatures all over the place. In my experience it's anything but developer friendly. But if all you need is a text index on a document store wi…

> IMHO a JSON-over-HTTP API

No no no no, again no.

We don't need yet another shitty query language bolted onto one of the most error prone and annoying to type serialization formats while transmitting data on top of a by default stateless protocol that makes no sense for a database.

I'm sick of it.

SQL. The same queries will work in 95% of the case on any SQL db. There is a driver in almost every language that is robust. There are implementations great for every use case; embedded, scalable, transactional. That's friendly.

There is nothing wrong with SQL, it's freaking awesome.

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#105

I was reading a post [0] by Brian Cantrill that predicted this would be the result of licences like the SSPL. I instinctively disagreed with him, but it turns out he was right: "The cloud services providers are currently reproprietarizing all of computing — they are making their own CPUs for crying out loud! — reimplementing the bits of your software that they need in the name of the service that their customers want…

I liked that post - this especially near the end, referring to Adam Jacob and some of his posts.

> Adam has endured the challenges of the open core model, and is refreshingly frank about its economic and psychic tradeoffs. And if he doesn’t make it explicit, Adam’s fundamental optimism serves to remind us, too, that any perceived “danger” to open source is overblown: open source is going to endure, as no company is going to be able to repeal the economics of software. That said, as we collectively internalize that open source is not a business model on its own, we will likely see fewer VC-funded open source companies (though I’m honestly not sure that that’s a bad thing).

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#106
post #18

If I'm reading the pricing page correctly, DocumentDB would run a _minimum_ of $200/month. That's for the smallest instance and no storage or I/O. Kind of steep if you ask me.

Besides that AWS will charge per transaction (at 0.2 per million) outrageous given that you already pay per instance. Correct pricing strategy needs to be per request or per instance, AWS is charging for both

The correct pricing strategy of any product is "whatever the customer is willing to pay for it". If you feel the price is too steep for your use-case, then don't buy it.

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#107

I hope MongoDB's users are really keen on on-prem otherwise this might be a challenging moment for them.

Not sure what this means. MongoDB has had Atlas which is a cloud hosted solution for a while now.

But you cant host your data inside your aws account with atlas, non starter for some

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#109

My bet is that it is built on top of Aurora PostgreSQL. By looking at the "Limits" section ( https://docs.aws.amazon.com/documentdb/latest/developerguide... ), identifiers are limited to 63 characters and the same characters that PostgreSQL limits identifiers to; and a collection size limit of 32TB, coincidentally maximum PostgreSQL table size. Edit: I can confirm: does not allow the UTF-8 null character in strings:…

Aurora Postgres isn't really Postgres(only compatible), or is it?

Re: Amazon DocumentDB, with MongoDB compatibility

#110
post #77
post #74

I'm pretty sure this is going to kill Mongo as a company dead. With this in existence there's literally no reason to use Atlas. If they wanted to twist the knife they should get to work implementing a pass through migration option.

MongoDB still have a strong hand - control of the client and particularly its exposed featureset - due to that, also control of the protocol and the ability to, for example, insert legally protected strings in the style of the Apple SMC signature into the handshake. - ability to gate new features on the presence of an object like a copyrighted text, trademark, or even a crypto signature - ownership of the name. AWS a…

The client change would never work. The client is licensed as lgpl, so if they tried to pull any funny business like that, it would be instantly forked and if’d out.
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